


Fading Embers

by nymphetxamine



Category: DCU (Animated), DCU (Comics), DCU (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Eventual Romance, M/M, Possible Character Death, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5388872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphetxamine/pseuds/nymphetxamine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham was not Hell; only the foolish and the drama-queens dared to throw a word like that around in a city like this. "Was not", of course, being the past tense.<br/>Throw a couple of zombies in a city and the world goes mad. Funny - Jason sees a resemblance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fading Embers

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is the first chapter of my first series fic on my first active publishing account. Exciting, right? Everything sucks and nobody is okay, but this is fantastic. I hope this hits it off.

There must have been something in the air – some bitter sense of ugly expiry – because if Jason Todd’s usual behaviour could be called ‘mockingly sardonic’, he had become a flat-out fucking pessimist within the space of three days.

Three days; all the time it had taken for Gotham to burn.

The bombs had hit fast and without warning, but through some lingering sense of luck, they had not been in the city, or even anywhere near it until the outbreak progressed. The virus grew angry, expanded, adjusted to the broken environment. The infected became hostile before their eyes greyed, started snarling, like dogs or dragons or something worse. Isolated cases became mass outbreaks and then a global disaster. The news stopped reporting. Radio transmissions were cut. If there were any doctors left, and if they were still looking for a cure, their time was ticking, too. Honestly, the living would be better off if they all shot themselves, but then came that pesky survival instinct and, well, it never let anybody have much fun.

Perhaps Jason was so angry because he was spending the apocalypse with Dick (there was only so much naïve optimism he could take at one time when it was genuine, but the faked “we’re okay, it’s going to be okay” made him sick, because he knew better than anybody else what death looked like and it looked an awful lot like this), but then again, there were worse people to be stuck with from a strategic standpoint if nothing else. If anybody asked Jason – which nobody ever did – he would say that he wasn’t angry. He was just realistic. Rooting for the home team, three-one to the zombies.

Or, well, he might say that if he were in a particularly talkative mood, anyway. A more realistic response was “get your fat nose out of my fucking business.”

“I mean,” grumbled a voice, gravelly and thick around the side of the counter where Dick was crouched, tucking tins of somehow un-looted food in his duffle bag, “I admire your sunshiny outlook, don’t get me wrong, but the chances of us even seeing the end of this week – ”

“I know, they’re slim. Your point?”

“My point, if you’d shut your mouth for two minutes, is you’re just prolonging the inevitable right now.”  
Dick popped his head over the top of the counter, pointedly ignoring the angry smear of old blood across the fine tile, to throw a hard glare in Jason’s direction. He had hoped it might earn him more than a roll of the eyes and a mighty scoff, but in hindsight he was walking on thin ice as it were and when he wasn’t in control of their armoury supplies, he counted himself lucky that Jason didn’t look up.

“You really think we need cigarettes?” He sighed, Jason thumbing through the rattled display two meters away from him.

“Sure,” came a shrug, “why not? If i’m going back down it’s not gonna be without one of these babies.”

Dick left it at that, because they’d be gone in a couple days and it wasn’t like he could take them away – wasn’t like he’d ever dare try touching Jay’s things, not even now. Especially not now, with how precious everything had become. Their emergency packs had given them enough to drag them through a couple weeks by the scruff of the neck, if they managed to keep hold of them, but there had always been the assumption that, had they ever needed to leave, they would still be able to replenish draining supplies. Of course, neither of them had ever planned for the zombie apocalypse, as it were, whether or not the second Robin was breathing, walking, and somehow living proof that they really, honestly, probably should have at some point. Rookie mistakes, or whatever. Maybe they were still too sane after Bruce did a royal job of fucking them over.

Gathering the final can at the back of the low shelf, half-crushed from the scramble earlier in the day before military helicopters drove out everybody who didn’t have at least three sniper rifles and a rocket launcher, Dick hopped with fading gusto to his feet, tossing it to his partner who was still half occupied thumbing through smoke sticks, but not too occupied to catch it and keep it in his own bag.

“Ready to go?” Dick pressed, stepping over shattered glass and peering out the window, down the street left to the remnants of what had once been somebody’s home, and then right to a single stumbling creature twenty or thirty meters away, too far to have noticed them yet but near enough that he lowered his voice just in case.

“Sure, you want my Magnum?”

“Nah.” He shook his head and Jason brushed it off, tucked it back into the holster secured firm at his hip, ignoring the gentle tap of a staff on his calf. “You know guns aren’t my thing.”

“You’ll wish they were when you get bit. Can’t get too close to ‘em, y’know.

“Uh-huh,” but Dick wasn’t listening, not really, because he was already half-out of the building and Jason followed suit, murmuring something under his breath about responsibility (like he could really talk, the bastard). “So we probably want to get high up. Only see one, but with all these streets…” he trailed off, looked to his left where Jason was not and then back, around him, feeling his heart jump to his throat before the sound of a creak drew his gaze away. Jay was already nudging the store’s dumpster back against a wall, testing the wheel stability, vaguely satisfied when it didn’t move too far away at the sign of any foreign weight. It would be a jump, and maybe if they hadn’t spent their childhood being trained to swing from windowsills and wall-lights they wouldn’t have been able to make it, but what-if’s and maybe’s were best left in Wayne Manor, somewhere among the wreckage and the flame.

“Way ahead of you, big bird. You gettin’ slow on me?”

Dick almost, for one hopeful moment, felt like they were back in Blüdhaven before things went to shit or at least before it became a target-zone, because Jason was grinning for the first time in two days and, shit, maybe soon he’d even start actively trying to keep his stupid ass alive.

“You wish,” came an eventual response, to which Jay shook his head, held out his hand for Dick’s bag, and launched it successfully onto the roof first time unlike his third-time-lucky average.

“Probably your age. If you want, we can track down a drug store and nab you some anti-wrinkle serum.”

Dick laughed, fake and overzealous, in a winning campaign to keep that smile. He managed for a half second, but it was a half second longer than he had expected for quite some time and he counted that a victory in his favour. None the less, Jason ended the conversation and hoisted himself up onto the rooftop with minimal struggle, catching the edge so that he could raise over. Dick followed suit, accepting his hand when it was offered (regardless of the fact that he didn’t particularly need it), and used the minimal leverage to scan what of the streets he could see behind the collected rubble and car-wrecks. Avidly, he couldn’t see shit, if the thick exhalation was anything to go by.

“No luck?”

“Nah,” he grumbled, gathering his bag against the fold of his arm, “place is wrecked.”

“Strange. Whack a couple of flesh-eating zombies in a city and the world goes mad. Who’d’ve thought?”

Dick adored Jason, he really did, but if he didn’t drop the sarcasm, he just might have to hit him.


End file.
